I'm on hiatus

Meanwhile listen to this:


Towa Tei - Mind Wall

I Want to Be Evil

Scratching

If you google image my real name this is one of the photos you get on page 1:

Is it supposed to be my bedpost or am I one of the marks?

(And yes, I had a completely legitimate reason for google imaging myself.)

Cancel Out Your Neighbors

Not Photoshopped

The Soundtrack to Me

Stereolab- Fluorescenses


Stereolab- Miss Modular

What better to play on my birthday?

...to me

The National - Apartment Story

I agree but when I post this on line does it make a noise?

"As a normative way of socializing for gay men, online cruising is a disaster. We need to recognize its effects -- including its tendency to isolate us, encourage objectification, and diminish our sense of life’s nonsexual possibilities -- as disasters. We need to recognize that too many of us, too much of the time, are cruising online because it is easier and feels safer than thinking about the love we are missing and the power we do not have. Too many of us, too much of the time, are cruising online because it’s easier and feels safer than mustering the courage, patience, discipline, and imagination required to help ourselves and each other become the men that, in our strongest moments, we want to be.

"Gary Cohan, a physician who treats half of A-list gay Hollywood, says we have to start thinking in a deliberate way about what normal social interaction consists of. “For a long time,” Cohan says, “it has been considered normal to be on the Net. We need to start thinking, That’s not normal.”

"We need to put our heads together and try to figure out what we want normative social life to look like. Whatever the answer turns out to be, it will involve creating social structures that serve and gratify our desire to have sex with each other and also promote and support the possibility of developing and sustaining intimate relationships. Gay men came close to the goal of building such a society when they were hit with the plague of AIDS. That generation learned the rewards of sacrifice and of setting limits on the place of sex in our culture. But to those of us who were children or teenagers during the epidemic, AIDS made coming out so scary that we preferred to avoid getting too involved in our gay forefathers’ world.

"And along came the Internet, a tool that let us build gay lives without having to get very involved with older people -- not that, if we’d wanted to, there were a whole lot of them still living. Now, though, it seems our avoidance has created a different kind of society, more isolating, more brutal, and weaker. We still don’t know how to have enduring relationships. We still don’t have examples. We still don’t have mentors. We still don’t have courtship rituals. We are still getting HIV.

"We celebrate the fact that we’re out to the straight world, even though the only thing that means, in many cases, is that they know we’re gay.

"When we logged on, I don’t think most of us realized we were creating new secret lives. I don’t think we knew what we were getting into. But we got into it. For most of us, this is not working. And if it’s not working for you, then it’s time to get off."
- Michael Joseph Gross, in an Out Magazine story titled Has Manhunt Destroyed Gay Culture?

via Joe.My.God

joemygod.blogspot.com

Situation resolved

Sort of.
No more sad Tuesdays.

Song for a Sad Tuesday

Okkervil River- No Key, No Plan


My long absence from this spot was because of....
you've already guessed it
...work.

I will not bore you with the details of how many hours I've worked or how many tragic meetings I've been in. I've just been busy. But there is one situation I will detail:

For the last two weeks, I have gone out of my way, bent over backwards and taken great pains to keep secret a great mistake of a coworker. I have tried everything I could to keep from exposing the mistake, hoping that she would come forward and accept responsibility. She has been given every opportunity to do so. However, she did not and what has resulted is a situation where the company will now owe a large sum of money to a supplier to cover expenses for the mistake. Her superior is refusing to cover those and at whose feet do they now fall? Mine. She messed up. I tried to cover for her. When the situation grew so bad that I needed to tell her boss, the boss did not take the time to have a one on one meeting as I requested so that I could explain. The boss wrote the whole thing off as a miscommunication on my part because mistake-maker took no responsibility.

There is no way to sum this whole story up in a few words suitable for a blog but if I tried they would go something like this:

I tried to do something nice. I got screwed. Such is life. People suck. Amen.

These are the days when I wonder why I live in Texas

Dallas Today Jul 28		Mostly Sunny	105°/78°
Tue Jul 29		Partly Cloudy	102°/78°
Wed Jul 30		Partly Cloudy	102°/79°
Thu Jul 31		Mostly Sunny	102°/79°
Fri Aug 01		Partly Cloudy	102°/78°
Sat Aug 02		Mostly Sunny	101°/77°
Sun Aug 03		Mostly Sunny	101°/78°
Mon Aug 04		Mostly Sunny	99°/78°
Tue Aug 05		Sunny	100°/77°
Wed Aug 06		Partly Cloudy	98°/76°
For the Fahrenheit impaired: Today Jul 28 Mostly Sunny 41°/26° Tue Jul 29 Partly Cloudy 39°/26° Wed Jul 30 Partly Cloudy 39°/26° Thu Jul 31 Mostly Sunny 39°/26° Fri Aug 01 Partly Cloudy 39°/26° Sat Aug 02 Mostly Sunny 38°/25° Sun Aug 03 Mostly Sunny 38°/26° Mon Aug 04 Mostly Sunny 37°/26° Tue Aug 05 Sunny 38°/25° Wed Aug 06 Partly Cloudy 37°/24°

Back to School

This video was apparently made as a school project. If you can end up with results like this, I want to take the class:



One of my absolute favorite Spoon songs, Finer Feelings.

I have been working part time on a video about the robots that deliver my mail at work. I may never finish it. I find working with video so limiting. Anyone know of some great video editing software that I should try?

I'm back.

The roof of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Hangzhou is covered with marbles.


Hundreds of thousands of marbles.


Just thought you'd like to know.

Nu-job-ugh

I don't even have time to read blogs anymore.

Maybe things will be better when I get back from Asia.

I finally get to leave next week after many delays.

But soon I will be back here:
And that will make me very happy.

Speaking of which, how about a Happy Friday tune from the Queen of Cantopop


Faye Wong
Jiang ai

Song for a Happy Friday

Of all things, it's.....

Coldplay
Speed of Sound

Yeah I know. Odd choice. But, when I stop and really listen, I love this song. Years after its release (of course I could not listen back then- they're too big) it still registers well with me.

Plus, another reason for my current interest, I am planning a return to the piano after a 20 year respite. At least now I know for certain that I will never be forced to play in church again.

In case you're interested here are the lyrics:

How long before I get in?
Before it starts, before I begin?
How long before you decide?
Before I know what it feels like?
Where To, where do I go?
If you never try, then you'll never know.
How long do I have to climb,
Up on the side of this mountain of mine?

Look up, I look up at night,
Planets are moving at the speed of light.
Climb up, up in the trees,
every chance that you get,
is a chance you seize.
How long am I gonna stand,
with my head stuck under the sand?
I'll start before I can stop,
before I see things the right way up.

All that noise, and all that sound,
All those places I got found.
And birds go flying at the speed of sound,
to show you how it all began.
Birds came flying from the underground,
if you could see it then you'd understand.

Ideas that you'll never find,
All the inventors could never design.
The buildings that you put up,
Japan and China all lit up.
The sign that I couldn't read,
or a light that I couldn't see,
some things you have to believe,
but others are puzzles, puzzling me.

All that noise, and all that sound,
All those places I got found.
And birds go flying at the speed of sound,
to show you how it all began.
Birds came flying from the underground,
if you could see it then you'd understand,
ah when you see it then you'll understand.

All those signs, I knew what they meant.
Some things you can invent.
Some get made, and some get sent,
Ooh--
Birds go flying at the speed of sound,
to show you how it all began.
Birds came flying from the underground,
if you could see it then you'd understand,
Oh, when you see it then you'll understand.

Office Talk

The banal clichés used in offices have always gotten on my freakin' nerves.

New Job has exposed me to several that I had not heard before. I wonder if they are specific to this company?

Note
All emails are referred to as notes as in "I sent you a note about this yesterday" or "I just got a note from Bob confirming that he received a note from Betty yesterday."

Opportunity
The mandatory company-wide positive attitude causes most everyone to refer to any problem, oversight or major fuck up as an "opportunity." Example: "We have a strong opportunity in the domestic linens" meaning the ones we have don't sell worth a shit.

Drive, Driving, the Driver
The verb and objects derived from "drive" are taken as equivalents to "taking responsibility" or "responsible party" as in, "Homo Ono is the driver for this half-assed blog."

Own, Owning, the Owner
Much the same as "driver" above, this is used to signify who to blame when things go badly.

Does that make sense?
This phrase is used in such a condescending manner it might as well be followed with "you fucking idiot." People who are explaining things that they feel are obvious to someone who is either unaware or disbelieving will pause and ask "Does that make sense" in order to get a positive reply. Then they proceed as if they have presented a compelling argument for their point of view.

Yet none of these compare to the offensive way that a former co-worker used "white board" as a verb. Example: "This problem is so complicated, we really need to white board it out"- meaning, we need to diagram the situation on the erasable board in his office. The echo of those words will follow me to my grave.

Song for a Happy Friday

Okkervil River
For Real

Song for a Happy Friday

Wax Tailor
Positively Inclined

Cannibalistic

Serving up fresh flesh for the children. It's a heart warming scene.